Illegal Immigrants 1,000,000 - Immigration-Bigots Zero

The newest numbers have been crunched and the new official tally is in. Illegal immigrants put in $1,000,000 more into the 2010 Colorado economy, through income taxes, sales taxes, and rent payments, than they took out in services such as education, emergency medical care, and incarceration costs.

The Denver Post placed the big news in a tiny article on the last page of the business section, just above the come-on to prospective franchisees for Schlotzsky’s fast food restaurant chain. The Bell Policy Center study reached its conclusion after a detailed analysis of the updated state statistics.

Will this new study satisfy the immigration-bigots in Colorado? Absolutely not, because bigots never let a little thing like the facts get in the way of a good festival of scapegoating or hate-mongering.

America has a long and proud tradition of pitting the last wave of immigrants against the present wave. I’ll bet America’s most famous immigration-bigot (and Colorado politician) Tom Tancredo has distant relatives who were lynched on the streets of Denver at the turn of the last century. But Italians are different than Mexicans and Asians and Africans, right, Tom? And then there is always “What part of the word ‘illegal’ don’t they understand?”

Around 1900 (+or -), my grandparents booked steerage-class tickets on big ships from Sicily to New York City. Once safely on Ellis Island, they were checked for diseases by one son of an immigrant, while another son of an immigrant “anglicized” their names (or gave them American-sounding nicknames).Then were automatically and immediately placed upon the path to citizenship. It now takes up to 17 years, tens of thousands of dollars, and an anchor in the U.S., to accomplish what my grandparents did by simply walking offadaboat.

Everybody wants to be the last one in, but making something illegal that was once legal using no better rationale than some xenophobic, jingoistic, nonsensical tripe, just won’t cut it anymore, especially now that illegal aliens represent a $1,000,000 addition to Colorado’s economic stimulus package!

But the immigration-bigot will point out that there are Americans out of work and there are illegal immigrants working; ergo, illegal immigrants must be taking jobs away from American citizens. According to the Bell Policy Center study, undocumented immigrants constitute 4.5% of the Colorado labor force, with 107,500 active employees.

In response to the “illegals are taking our jobs” argument, I say that you immigration-bigots can apply for toilet cleaning positions at any or all of the Denver motels on

East Colfax Avenue

. As a roofer, you may test your fear of heights as well as your tolerance for 120-degree heat and sun exposure. Or you could repeatedly exercise your back muscles, picking peaches in Palisade or cantaloupe in Rocky Ford. I’m sure that at least one of you knows a nice white landscape contractor, who is looking for cheap manual labor.

In addition, the sugar beet crop is way up in Colorado this year! I’ll bet the Western Sugar Cooperative is hiring. Or maybe you could cut up cows or pigs at J.B Swift or Cargill, or process chickens for Northern Colorado Poultry. All of the aforementioned jobs are just some of the many that immigrants do now, but I am sure that you could replace an immigrant worker and embark upon a long, successful career in one of those up-and-coming fields. No? None of the above?

Okay, so maybe it’s not the Mexicans and the Somalis who are taking all the good jobs. Maybe the immigration-bigot needs to look to the east, (way east) for other immigrants to blame for the lack of six-figure-income-producing opportunities.

Some of my east Asian immigrant clients used to refer to what they called the Chinese Mafia. You know, the little happenstance of fortuity that somehow puts would-be emigrants in Asia in touch with smugglers, who just happen to know immigration attorneys in the U.S., who just happen to have relatives who are hiring at restaurants and sweat shops, at or usually below the minimum wage. And in just 20-30 years or so, the smugglers, attorneys, and employers all get paid off, and citizenship for the immigrant  is virtually guaranteed, if they live that long.

The Chinese Mafia is such a great example of American Entrepreneurship. It makes millions for a few and relegates others to a life of indentured servitude. Yet, I don’t think the immigration-bigot is coveting a sweat-shop job any more than they want that toilet-cleaning job on

East Colfax Avenue

. Bad example, maybe.

What about them “IndianPackistaniIranianAsianorotherpeoplewhotalkfunnyorjustdon’tlooklikeus”? You know, those over-achievers who came up from the ghettos of their home countries and worked hard in school and put in long hours away from their families and made their kids do the same and got hired by American companies for pennies on the dollar, that the same companies would otherwise have had to pay an under-educated, lazy, self-obsessed American.

You would think that all those hours which American kids spent in front of the TV, video games, Facebook, and YouTube, would be worth something to corporate employers, but they seem to have other ideas. There has to be some insidious and sinister plot afoot by immigrants that is to blame for the numbing, dumbing and chumming of Americans, and I am sure the immigration-bigot is well aware of such a conspiracy. To find the gory details, I would have to surf “birther” websites and I just can’t bring myself to knowingly sign up for another psychotic break from reality.

So now that illegal immigrants are putting more money into the Colorado economy than they are taking out, what exactly does the immigration-bigot have left to complain about? You won’t hear them say it out loud but, in their own little circles, they are known to harbor the same complaint. “These (place your ethnic slur here) are just too damned different from us regular folks!”

The immigration-bigots are really just the next generation of the racial bigots from our not-so-distant past. Just like their immigrant (or Confederate) forbearers, they equate white with “clean” and brown with “unclean.” They only like names that they can pronounce easily and on the first try. They have no more than a rudimentary understanding of the English language, yet they insist that everybody in America speak American. They expect the most from, but give the least back, to their own country. Their sense of entitlement is only exceeded by their penchant for blaming others for their own abysmal personal failures.

Back in 2006, when the Bell Policy Institute reported that illegal immigrants in Colorado cost the state $31 million more than they put in, the immigration-bigots were quick to point out this study as a justification for scrapping the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and arresting people for being brown. No doubt, this new study by the same Bell Policy Institute will be vigorously challenged. But for now, the score in Colorado is illegal immigrants, 1,000,000; immigration-bigots, zero!

J. Brandeis Sperandeo